


till human voices wake us

by oflights



Series: in the chambers of the sea [1]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, Folklore, Human/Merman Romance, M/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-23 15:58:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16162151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oflights/pseuds/oflights
Summary: Gabe is a merman who drowns humans for a living. Tyson is a human who apparently wouldn't mind being drowned.





	till human voices wake us

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [emilyisobsessed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyisobsessed/pseuds/emilyisobsessed) in the [boysarehot](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/boysarehot) collection. 



> Another Avs fic challenge, another instance of me picking Emily's prompt and turning it into...something. Whatever this is. Most of the target audience here already knows the details of the prompt so I won't repeat them, and of course in typical oflightsian fashion I kind of butchered it (as well as Arthurian legend and too much mythology, I'm sorry!!!) so the summary is all you're getting. And of course all these notes.
> 
> I just want to be clear and **warn** for this: this is a pretty dark, sort of Twilight-y premise that doesn't take itself _too_ seriously but can definitely be upsetting if you think about it too hard. Gabe drowns people and Tyson truly doesn't mind and it works, but I would never call this a healthy foundation for a relationship. It's very much a fucked up fairytale. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks so so much to everyone who participated in the challenge with me and cheered me on for this nonsense! This spawned endless discussions of the mechanics of mermaid sex (which didn't even make it in this one, god I'm the worst), Gabe with a ripped bod and a shark head (get that drawing out of your head right now, readers!!!), and loads of other insanity. The mermaid fic ~experience has been great and I'm absurdly thankful to everyone who helped with it. I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> Thanks, as always, to Bridget for the quick beta!

Gabe doesn’t have much of a plan for where he’s heading that day, and truly he doesn’t need one. There are days when he knows he wants to drift by the sands of a sunny, crowded beach, when he wants to feel salt on his skin when he pops up above the surface, or let the crash of a rushing river bend him to its will. But with a flick of his tail and a twist of his hips, Gabe can swim anywhere in mere moments. Distance is different for his kind under the sea.

So Gabe’s not altogether bothered when he breaks the surface of a cool, calm lake, rippling under warm summer sunlight. Something in the way the breeze feels on his face, the smell of the houses in the distance lets Gabe know he’s somewhere in Canada—Ontario.

Gabe smiles and swims.

His powerful arms slice through the water easily, pulling him through at a speed that would catch any surface dweller’s eye, though he’s not going to win any big races down below. And there are no surface dwellers around for a while, odd for a hot day on a lake at high noon.

This makes a seed of excitement bloom in the pit of Gabe’s gut, because he just knows that there will be someone here, someone alone and someone good. And indeed, a few more turns brings him closer to a longer dock on the water, jutting out from a big, white-paneled home the local humans will call a cottage, though its extravagance and size doesn’t track at all with the cottages Gabe heard about in the tales of the land his elders had told him as a child.

There are two Sea-Doos bobbing in the water on either side of the end of the dock, and on top of the dock there is a man, sitting alone. Gabe drops a little so that only the top of his head is sticking out of the water, and he grins. He flicks his tail, a flash of deep green tapping across the sunlight, and swims closer.

The man is pale in the sun and barefoot, lounging in a chair in sunglasses and a wide-brimmed bucket hat. There is a fishing pole wedged between his thighs and a single beer dangling from his fingers, and Gabe thinks he’ll be perfect. His dark hair and the money put into his cottage will please the sea witch without a doubt. Gabe pulls himself further to the surface and keeps grinning.

“Hey there,” he calls, and the man jumps a little in his seat. Gabe watches him scan the water for a few seconds, tilting his head to the side past Gabe before sliding it back and finding him on the second go around. Gabe waves, and the man sits up a little straighter in his seat.

“Hey,” the man says, a small, uncertain smile on his face. “How’re you doing?”

He sounds friendly and neighborly, if a little confused. Gabe’s grin widens, all teeth. He thinks he can feel the man blinking, even if he can’t see it through the glasses.

“I’m doing well. Nice day for a swim,” Gabe says, letting his arms drift behind him in small, lazy strokes that don’t really move him anywhere. The sound of the water splashing a little is loud in the calm of the day; it’s quiet here except for where Gabe is, and that’s usually the case.

“For sure,” the man says. There are damp spots of sweat on his striped polo shirt, and Gabe notes them. This should be easy and fruitful.

“You should join me,” Gabe adds at the same time the man says, “Hey are you from around here?”

Gabe only allows a moment’s pause, not letting himself be thrown off course. He shrugs. He doesn’t like to full-on lie to the men he collects for the sea witch; he doesn’t think he needs to do that. They want to come with him. They know, deep down, what the water holds for them, but they do it anyway. That’s Gabe’s power.

The truth is that Gabe’s home is somewhere deep in the Baltic Sea, green and cool, but in a way every body of water is his home. Under the protection of the sea witch, there is no drop of water Gabe’s people cannot go, though of course that freedom comes with a price. That’s why he is here.

That’s why he says to the man, “Sure, more or less. I love the water.”

The man’s smile fades a little bit. “Oh yeah, me too. It’s great out here.”

“Definitely. Are the fish biting today?” Gabe knows they’re not; perhaps they had been, before Gabe arrived, but no fish wants to witness this.

The man laughs a little, shaking his head. “Not lately, but it’s okay. I’ve got a big hunk of prime rib for my wife to roast up tonight, so we don’t really need supper.”

Gabe tries not to wrinkle his nose or mention that he’s a vegetarian. “Is your wife a good cook?”

“Oh yeah. She does a great job of taking care of me.”

“She sounds great.” _Too bad you’ll never see her again_ goes unsaid, but it will be clear soon enough.

“She’s the best,” the man says. His smile is back, and Gabe feels something like pity stir in him.

He ignores that straight away and glides a little closer to the end of the dock, smiling brightly up at the man. “A while to go for supper,” Gabe says, nodding up at the sun, still sitting high and bright in the sky like a golden apple. The man shrugs, and Gabe presses forward. This never takes very long when you know the right things to say. This is the easy part. The hard part is yet to come. “Plenty of time for a swim, I think.”

The man laughs again. “Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t bring my trunks out.”

“No need for trunks,” Gabe says, winking. When that makes the man stiffen, smile freezing on his face, Gabe quickly reads the reaction and switches tracks. “Those shorts are fine. You’ve never jumped in your lake in your clothes before?”

“I guess,” the man says, but he still looks unsure. He’s also staring hard at the water where the lower half of Gabe’s body should be more visible. It would be if his tail wasn’t the same green as this lake, visible to humans only in flashes of the light. Usually the eyes of humans don’t really wander down past the toned, thick muscles of Gabe’s chest and abdomen, but this human seems a little skittish about that sort of thing.

“It’s nice in here, your lake,” Gabe says. That’s almost a lie—yes, it is nice. But this is not this man’s lake. That’s simply what he wants to hear.

“Yeah, man,” the man says. “Water’s always great this time of year.”

“Then come on in.”

“Did you say you were from around here?”

“Yes, I am. Love to swim.”

“Where, did you say? I know all the neighbors around here and I’m sure I’d remember—I mean, you don’t look like old Mrs. O’Connor, that’s for sure.”

The man is blushing, and Gabe feels a resulting warmth spread through him, something satisfying. Skittish, yes, but not impervious.

“Sometimes I feel like I live in the water,” Gabe says, and he sighs happily. “It’s so nice in here.”

“Yeah, definitely.”

“Better with friends.” He watches that land, watches the man consider, battling neighborliness and kindness Gabe knows permeates every bit of this place. He does love when the current pulls him to Canada.

Distantly, from the house, Gabe hears a dog barking, but neither he nor the man pay the sound much mind. The man nods and stands, taking his hat and sunglasses off, following with his shirt to reveal swaths of very pale skin. “Ash’ll kill me if I get burned again,” he says, looking back at the house for only a moment, but Gabe shakes his head and reaches out.

“Come on, a short swim. The sun won’t get you that bad.”

It’s not a lie; this may be the hard part but it’s fast, too. The man won’t last long enough in Gabe’s water to be burned. The sun won’t get to leave its mark on the sea witch’s new toy. It wouldn’t dare.

The man smiles again, then takes a few steps back on the dock before running towards the edge. He gets some good height on his jump—his legs are powerful, thigh muscles toned if narrow, and Gabe wonders if he’s an athlete on the surface world, not that that will matter anymore.

The man hits the water with a loud, splash, his laughter exploding through the quiet of the lake.

The dog barks and sounds farther away, and Gabe swims near.

 

  
The man’s body weighs nothing to Gabe underwater. Gabe tows him along behind him, careful not to turn back and look at his wide open, unseeing eyes. He doesn’t like to linger.

Nimue’s castle is somewhere deep in the North Sea, and it stretches beneath the entire British Isle. As Gabe nears it, he can hear her singing, echoing through the dark depths of the water. Sometimes her song drifts up to the surface world in faint echoes, bringing sailors to the edge of their ships, but the sea witch never bothers to go up there to collect them. She has Gabe’s people to do that for her.

Gabe can’t understand her song; it’s some old, haunting form of English, nothing close to the languages he’s learned to speak to humans in his lifetime. He doesn’t think the man he’s towing could understand it either, but if he were alive and this close he’d be drawn to it anyway. He couldn’t help himself. Even Gabe feels the slight tug, a yearning for the sea that makes no sense for a merman.

He shakes it off and swims forward, nodding at the mermaids who guard Nimue’s court, milling about and brushing each other’s hair. They giggle and wave at him and Gabe waves back but he knows it’s an act; they are as deadly as they are beautiful, like their mistress. He would never try to cross them.

Nimue’s singing drifts off as Gabe swims along the seashell-laden path to her throne room, carved out of coral and shell and bone, bright purples and pinks splashed across the deep dark of the water. Her magic powers underwater light across every part of the palace but Gabe would know his way in the dark. He’s been here many times before.

Personally, Gabe prefers the palace of his kind, built of kelp and other seaweeds and the magic of the merpeople: pulsing and green and alive. Not as big but filled to the brim with mermen and mermaids who choose to live there together, to keep their community alive. Gabe loves his home. He won’t say that within these walls, but it’s true.

Gabe swims into the throne room unimpeded and readies himself. Nimue is brushing her hair as well: long and blood red with gold starfish dotted through it, wriggling with magic every time her silver bristles pass over them. Her legs, long and pale and distinctly, mockingly human, hang over the arms of her throne beneath a gauzy white dress, artfully tattered. She looks at Gabe with the full might of all her terrifying beauty, and a bright, pleased smile parts her lips.

“Sweet Gabriel,” she says, tossing her hair in delight. Her voice is high and soft like a young girl’s, though Gabe knows she must be very, very old, perhaps as old as the sea. “You’ve brought me a lake boy! My favorite, how did you know?”

Gabe swallows hard and releases the man from the lake, watching from his peripheral vision as he drifts towards Nimue as if pushed by an invisible hand at his back, utterly limp. He tries to focus on Nimue instead, though sometimes looking at her for too long is hard to bear.

“I’d forgotten, actually,” Gabe says honestly. The truth is that Nimue loves all of the men Gabe brings for her. The more beautiful, the better, but she really isn’t that picky. Behind the throne, deep red velvet curtains that look like they don’t belong in the sea at all hide proof of Nimue’s fondness for men of all kinds, men brought to her by Gabe and merpeople like Gabe. Gabe tries not to ever remember anything about them on the rare occasion she shows them to him. He’d prefer the curtains always stay drawn so he’s never asked to remember.

He wants to leave before the curtains come down—before Nimue pulls the body to her and works her magic. But she has not dismissed him and this isn’t the casual, comfortable court of Gabe’s people. There is standard and decorum here, and Gabe knows better than to leave before the sea witch is ready.

“You’ve done well for me,” Nimue tells him. Gabe stares at her face, not at her arm wrapped around the neck of the limp body, her long, red fingernails bright against the skin made paler and eerie in the underwater light. “You always do, Gabe. You are the very best at this—no marks, not a scratch on him. Perfect condition.”

Gabe shrugs. When you drown someone properly, with the right strength, there’s no need to leave marks. And he is not the kind of merman that kills humans against the rocks. There’s no need for that, either.

“I remember that much, my lady. No marks.” He swallows hard and hopes silently that she’s pleased enough to let him leave.

“Would you like to stay for the feast?” Nimue asks him, as if reading his mind with a cruel and careful smirk. At the word _feast_ , the mermaids and mermen that dwell in Nimue’s castle start emerging from different hallways, giggling and chattering to each other with excitement.

They don’t quite look like Gabe’s people, or even like the mermaids outside, who are newer—these merpeople glitter and flicker through the water, their skin and scales tinged pink and purple with bits of coral and seashell coating their bodies like a crust. They have been here so long that they have become part of Nimue’s castle, can settle into her walls while they sleep.

Once, Gabe is sure, they had been part of his community, his family—all merpeople were, one way or another. But they are Nimue’s now, soaked in her magic, bent utterly to her will not for protection but for love.

Gabe finds them almost as upsetting as the humans, and he will not be staying for the feast.

“My family is expecting me home,” Gabe says, trying to sound as remorseful as possible. This part is another routine: she always offers, and he always declines. Politely, and acting as if it pains him to do so. “Thank you, of course, but you know that they worry.”

“Of course,” Nimue says, and she waves at him dismissively, already losing interest, turning to her new toy. “You may go.” The merpeople are crowding in, a low, dangerous hum of hunger and interest vibrating through the water, and beyond them Gabe bows.

“Thank you, my lady.”

He turns and starts to swim away, moving faster as he hears a mermaid cackle and tug open the curtains. They fall with a thump and send a billow of dusty sand at Gabe’s back and he still doesn’t turn. He keeps swimming, refusing to look back.

The dozens and dozens of human heads no longer hidden behind the curtain will see enough. Gabe does not intend to join them, ever.

 

 

There are always some moments after Gabe leaves another human with the sea witch when he wonders whether he should’ve taken a different path as a merman. Not all of his people do this; there are builders, protectors, the ones who tend to the creatures they share their waters with. His sister trains hippocampi; his brother teaches young mermen and mermaids, two jobs Gabe thinks he’d be great at. 

But Gabe is very, very good at this, and it’s a necessity. Nimue likes him, which certainly isn’t true for all merpeople, and humans like him, which is how he does what he does with such skill and ease.

Sometimes he wishes he weren’t so good at this. And a few tides later, Gabe wishes that more than ever.

It starts off like any other day at sea. Gabe’s only plan is to avoid lakes, for no particular reason, just a feeling. He _is_ back in Canada but on the West Coast this time, floating around Vancouver Island. It’s a crowded day for the beaches he pops up on, scanning the shorelines, but Gabe knows he’ll find someone.

For a while, he lets the current take him where it may, enjoying the sun on his chest and warming his hair, kind of thinking it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if he didn’t find anyone today. There’s tomorrow, after all.

Soon enough, though, Gabe finds himself near a rocky outcrop, watching a group of guys clumsily climb all over and then pose for a picture. The group clears out and one guy stays behind, wearing only his swim trunks, ignoring the other guys hooting and calling out for him as he sits on a rock and looks at his phone.

The tide is low but the guy is still getting sea spray on his feet and legs, and he doesn’t seem to mind. He looks summer sun-kissed and tipsy, taking a few pictures of himself with his phone, his eyes sparkling up at the camera; the sun is bright on his curly brown hair, and he’s smiling.

There he is, Gabe decides, and swims towards the rocks carefully.

The guy sees him before Gabe calls out, his eyes widening as he nears. “Hey,” he says, putting his phone down in his lap. “What’re you doing out here, man? It’s pretty far out.” He looks back at where his friends have disappeared down the beach, then whips his head back around quickly to look at Gabe, like he can’t help it.

His mouth is open a little, and he suddenly looks more red than tan. This is going to be way, way too easy.

“Just out for a swim,” Gabe says, demonstrating with a few precise strokes through the water, letting his biceps flex through the seafoam. The guy’s mouth opens a little wider, and then he clears his throat and nods, smiling.

“I can respect that. I’m Tyson.”

“Gabe,” Gabe says, returning the smile.

Unprompted, with no coaxing, Tyson starts picking his way down the rocks, wincing at any sharp spots on his bare feet. Gabe calls out, “Careful!” before he quite knows what he’s saying, then shakes himself a little. It wouldn’t do for the guy to take any damage before he’s given to Nimue.

Tyson rolls his eyes and dips his feet in the shallow water, kicking up underwater sand. “Hey,” he says again when he’s closer to Gabe, a few meters out. “Do you want to grab some drinks with me and the boys? We’ve got plenty up there.”

Why he needed to come closer to Gabe to extend this invitation, Gabe doesn’t know, but he’s not going to look a gift hippocampus in the mouth. He shakes his head and splashes a little, grinning lazily. Tyson takes a few steps forward, wading out to his calves.

“Nah, the water’s way too nice,” Gabe tells him. He raises his voice. “You should—come in, yeah.” His voice breaks only because Tyson is already wading out further, leaning forward to swim out to where the water gets deeper, to where Gabe is.

Gabe literally can’t believe his luck, and he has to shake himself again because when Tyson’s head pops up out of the water, he’s smiling brightly at him, paddling closer.

“It’s a little cold,” Tyson says, wrinkling his nose, and Gabe laughs before he can help himself.

“Seriously? This is nothing. Have you ever swam in the Arctic?” He realizes how stupid that sounds when Tyson gives him a funny look and then shakes out a laugh, but he works very hard not to blush. Mermen don’t blush. Mermen _can’t_ blush.

“Uh, no. Have _you_?” Tyson looks Gabe up and down, but all he can really see is the tops of Gabe’s shoulders and his neck and his head. Apparently that’s enough, because Gabe catches him licking his lips. “Are you a viking?”

Gabe laughs again, tilting his back against the water. “I’m not,” Gabe says, and then, feeling wild and a little vicious, spurred on by the persistent smile on Tyson’s face, he lowers his voice and says, “I’m a merman, actually.”

Tyson laughs. “Okay, Ariel. Looks like you’ve had more drinks than any of us. No wonder you’re warm.”

“Mermen don’t feel the cold like surface dwellers do,” Gabe says, using the fancier term just to be an ass. Tyson still looks amused, drifting closer in the water. He’s still paddling like a dog, and Gabe wonders if he’s a bad swimmer. If he is, then the apparent strength in his shoulders, the hints of definition in his hips that the trunks don’t hide, seem utterly wasted.

And of course they’re wasted regardless, because Tyson will be dead soon, but that’s beside the point. Gabe kind of wants to see him swim.

“Oh yeah?” Tyson asks. He rolls his eyes again. “What about drunk mermen? Are you like boiling hot?”

“No—” Gabe starts, but Tyson shocks him into silence by suddenly reaching out and grabbing hold of both his arms, right at the thickest parts of the muscles.

“Nice,” Tyson says appreciatively, and Gabe stares at him. Tyson just holds him, not letting his hands wander, but the look on his face is suggestive enough. “Yeah, you’re pretty hot.”

“What are you—” And Gabe stops because Tyson is smirking, his eyes twinkling, and he really can’t quite believe—he’s a merman. He’s the best at what he does. And he’s losing control completely for a measly little human who probably has as much booze in his veins as he does blood.

“Do you always aggressively flirt with random guys you meet in the water?” Gabe asks. He puts his hands on Tyson’s arms, too, and holds on tight, watching Tyson’s eyes widen. He is slightly chilled and Gabe has to fight the silly urge to pull him closer for—no, he’ll pull him closer but not for _that_.

Tyson shrugs, biting his bottom lip. “Whatever. Why live on an island if you ignore the perks?”

“Even mermen?” Gabe asks, and Tyson smiles again. He looks down into the water but of course he can’t see anything yet; not until Gabe wants him to. Soon.

“Especially mermen,” Tyson says. He wrinkles his nose, though. “Does that really mean you’re a fish down there, though? Like you don’t have a—”

Gabe is the one to finally cut him off, pulling him closer partly because the timing feels right and partly because he wants to. They are close enough for their lips to brush, for Gabe to feel Tyson’s quivering slightly against his, to smell his breath—not as boozy as he’d imagined.

“You shouldn’t,” Gabe says quietly, his voice deep and concerned and gallant. “Mermen are dangerous.”

A flash of excitement flits across Tyson’s face; his voice breaks a little. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Gabe whispers. He moves his arms to turn Tyson in them, pressing his chest to Tyson’s back, his arm wrapping around his waist. He feels Tyson settle against him, still chilled slightly but warming up in Gabe’s hold, and then he feels more than hears his gasp as Gabe curls his tail around Tyson’s legs.

He feels it in that instant: the belief that Gabe really is what he says he is, and the utter thrill in quick succession, the complete acceptance. It’s a little shocking, and it startles him slightly when Tyson mutters, “Fuck yes,” and lets his head drop on Gabe’s shoulder.

Gabe doesn’t let himself dwell on it. He doesn’t let himself hesitate. He presses his mouth against Tyson’s ear and breathes out, “It’s warmer underwater.”

He pulls him below the surface.

It _is_ warmer underwater, in Gabe’s world, and quieter. They drift with the current and Gabe can feel the rocky outcrop retreating, land a distant memory down here. He looks above at the sun shining through the water’s surface, still lighting up Tyson’s hair, illuminating the air bubbles he puffs up through his nose, and keeps his eyes above. He never likes to watch this part.

After a few moments, Tyson starts to squirm in his hold, and Gabe’s chest tightens. He doesn’t know why he’s having so much trouble with this part. He clamps on tight, calling on the strength of the sea, imagining himself as a riptide, and he’s completely shocked when Tyson _just_ manages to squirm free with a forceful burst.

But instead of breaking for the surface, Tyson simply turns in Gabe’s arm and leans in to kiss him.

Gabe stays shocked. They’ve been under a few minutes now, long enough—he can _feel_ the bubbles getting more violent, can feel the drowning happening, even if he can’t conceptualize the experience. But Tyson seems unconcerned, kissing Gabe with his eyes closed until they flutter open and start to roll back in his head.

Gabe breaks the kiss and demands, “What is _wrong_ with you?”

But of course Tyson can’t answer him, and now that they’re further apart Gabe can see Tyson drowning: his wide open mouth, the frantic air bubbles as he tries to suck in air that isn’t there, the heaving of his chest as it fills with water. It makes sense, it’s what’s supposed to happen, but nothing that happened before that makes any sense whatsoever. Gabe doesn’t understand.

Maybe that’s why Gabe does what he does next: he’s so baffled, so completely thrown, that he _has_ to hear an explanation for this. He has to.

So he grabs Tyson tighter to him and swims for the surface with one arm, his tail propelling them both upwards at a speed no human could match. They break the surface together, the sun in their eyes, far from land as Gabe had suspected, but the main concern is how Tyson is limp against him, head dropping forward onto Gabe’s shoulder.

“No you don’t,” Gabe says furiously, thumping Tyson’s back until he feels him start to cough and shudder.

He tows him to the shore; they’d drifted down to sandier, more deserted beach and the tide is edging higher. Gabe lets the sea carry them both to shore, depositing Tyson on the sand and letting the shallows wash over him as he studies him, still coughing and choking up water.

“What,” Gabe says, breathing hard like he’d just been the one to almost drown. “is _wrong_ with you?”

Tyson’s answer is more coughing; he turns on his side and spits up mouthfuls of water before dropping exhaustedly down on his back, chest heaving. He looks over at Gabe with bloodshot eyes and says the exact last thing Gabe could’ve expected: “You saved me.”

Gabe slaps his hands in the water, furious. “Saved you? I was trying to _kill_ you.”

“Oh,” Tyson croaks out. He closes his eyes for a moment and then struggles to sit up, spitting out one last spurt of water and then wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Okay, but then you saved me, so—”

“Are you insane? Do you have a death wish or something?”

Tyson shrugs, looking remarkably calm for someone who just came very close to drowning and had done very little to prevent it. It was like something—lust?—had overridden his base, primal survival instinct and left him as Gabe’s prey. Gabe has never encountered a human like that before, and for some reason the thought infuriates him.

“I don’t know about that, but you totally saved me, so.” Tyson squints, cupping his hand over his brow to block out the sunlight. “Hey, why were you trying to kill me, anyway?”

“Because that’s what mermen like me do,” Gabe says, shaking his head. “I told you, we’re dangerous. We lure humans into the sea and kill them.”

“Why?”

“To appease the—okay, why the hell are you so calm about this?”

Tyson shrugs again, and Gabe wants to strangle him a little. He also can’t stop thinking of Tyson’s lips brushing against his, the feel of his chilled skin in the water, the weight of his head against his shoulder. All of this probably works to answer Tyson’s next question, which is, “So why did you save me?” but Gabe still splutters indignantly.

“I don’t _know_!”

Tyson’s eyes sparkle, like maybe he does know. He leans back on his hands and crosses his legs at the ankle in front of him, and Gabe lets himself dip back into the deeper water, feeling unsettled by all this land around him, like he’s in unsafe, wrong territory. Tyson’s eyes dim a little and he reaches out. “Hey, wait—”

“I have to go,” Gabe says, shaking his head and moving into the tide, pushing off the sandy beach with his tail. “You need to get some help or something. You’re a lunatic.”

“Can I see you again?” Tyson calls as Gabe backs up rapidly, and Gabe stares at him.

“What? No!”

“Why not? Come on!”

“You’re a lunatic!” Gabe yells again, bringing his arms up and letting a sudden wave crash over him and pull him under. He can still hear Tyson yelling after him from above and he goes against his own weird and primal instincts to dive deeper into the sea, head spinning.

 

Gabe doesn’t feel much better under the water, which has to be a first. For one, he has to go to Nimue emptyhanded, which means he can’t go to her at all. Nobody goes to Nimue emptyhanded, not unless they want to leave, well, without hands.

For another, his head still feels like it’s on land, like he’d had his own near-drowning moment, though of course that would be different than for humans. And of course he hadn’t come close, not really; he’d stayed in the water the whole time, lying across the boundary between two worlds, gaping at Tyson.

He can’t shake the unsettling, discomfiting feeling that despite how things had gone down, despite the roles they were supposed to play, it was Gabe who had almost become prey.

When he closes his eyes, Gabe thinks he can still hear Tyson calling for him on the surface world, even though that’s impossible. So he keeps his eyes wide open and swims home. He has to talk to his brother Adam.

He tries not to worry about Nimue. If he concentrates, Gabe thinks he can hear her laughing, high and mean and echoing across the ocean floor. He tells himself that means she’s been satisfied for the day, that some other merman—a worthier one, not one who let a mere human twist him up into knots like this—had brought her a tribute.

Gabe knows he doesn’t have long before he’ll have to return to her; she’ll send for him if he avoids it, and this is job, after all. It’s not the kind of job you just up and quit without consequences. And anyway, this is his duty, his responsibility to his people. He could never just let them down.

As if driving that point home, Gabe breaches the tall, towering gate of magic seagrass that guards his family’s realm, breaking through the barrier easy as anything. An enemy of their people wouldn’t be so lucky, but they have no enemies these days, thanks to Nimue. Thanks to what Gabe does, what Gabe just failed so miserably to do.

Gabe twists himself angrily through the water, not slowing down to say hello to anyone that waves to him. He needs to find Adam so he can make some sense of what just happened—surely there has to be some stories to explain the human he’d just encountered. Surely he’s not the only merman that this has happened to.

The thought of that is utterly humiliating, and Gabe clenches his fists and speeds up. Surely—

He’s tossed out of his thoughts as he barrels unseeingly into a broad, strong humanlike chest, jolting as it emits a sharp sort of whinnying sound. Horse hooves kick out and push Gabe back a bit, a warning, and Gabe looks up into the perfectly human face of EJ, his nostrils flared but his mouth smirking.

Gabe almost wishes EJ had more than just the front legs of a horse and the tail of a fish; he wishes he hadn’t gone and become best friends with an ichthyocentaur. He kind of doesn’t want to look at anyone that looks even remotely human, lobster claw antlers notwithstanding. He wouldn’t even want to look in a mirror.

He steels himself and tries to calm down, especially since EJ is chuckling and grabbing him by one arm with two hands, helping to steady him. “Hey there,” he says, grinning. “Hold your horses, man.”

EJ’s grinning way too hard for such a stupid joke, flashing the holes where a few of his front teeth had been punched out in a fight with a gorgon. His fish tail, not too dissimilar to Gabe’s but a deep blue instead of green, flicks out behind him in amusement. Gabe glares at him, happy he’s enjoying himself while Gabe is in crisis.

“I don’t have time for your crap,” Gabe says. His hands are still in fists, and he’s no gorgon but he thinks he’s mad enough to punch out a few more of EJ’s teeth. “I have to talk to Adam.”

EJ raises an eyebrow and looks over at the tall tide gauge erected in the center of the underwater city square. “Uh, he’s probably still in class, right?” He pats Gabe’s arm. “You okay there?”

“Yes—I mean, no, I’m—look, I’m fine, I just need to talk to my brother.”

He rolls his eyes as EJ fits on an exaggeratedly hurt look, thumping a hand to his chest. “Wow. And here I thought we were like brothers.” He gasps way too loudly when Gabe glances down at his horse front legs with a raised eyebrow of his own. “ _Wow_.”

“Look, can we do this some other time? I need to—”

“What you need is a drink,” EJ says decisively, suddenly gripping Gabe’s arm with a strength he really only shows off in gorgon-fighting, not that he does much of that lately. Gabe scoffs, but lets himself be towed off to the nearest bar; EJ may look like a human, a horse and a fish had a horrid threesome, but he’s as stubborn as a mule.

Soon enough he’s sitting on a seashell stool at a bar made up of iridescent abalone, drinking something sweet and blue that EJ had ordered for him. “There we go,” EJ says, clapping him on the back. “A few of those and then we can talk about whatever your drama is.” He glances back at the tide gauge and grimaces. “Um, drink fast, there’s a race on soon.”

Gabe glares at him, but it’s no good; EJ just gives him another toothless grin. So Gabe stares moodily down at the shimmering, swirling colors of the abalone bar, like solidified water, until EJ huffs again.

“Okay, stop pouting and tell me what happened.”

“A human got the best of me,” Gabe says all in a rush, and he pointedly ignores EJ’s surprised snicker. “A _human_! Not even a big one.”

“Like, what, he fought you?” EJ asks, sounding a bit baffled.

“Yes! No! I mean not really. I just—he tried to—” Gabe lowers his voice, mortified. “He tried to kiss me while I was drowning him.”

There is a stunned pause, silence hanging between them. The bartender, a usually friendly cyclops named Carl, is now looking everywhere but at them, whistling loudly.

Then, EJ starts laughing.

“Stop it,” Gabe says. He smacks the surface of the bar, temper flaring. “Will you quit that and help me?”

“I’m sorry,” EJ says, shaking his head and gasping out laughter. “But what kind of human kisses someone when they’re—”

“I know! What the hell!”

EJ gets out a few more peals of laughter before wiping at his eyes and shaking his head one last time. “Oh man,” he says, still chuckling a little. “So what happened? You let him go?”

“Yeah,” Gabe says, shoulders slumped. “I just—panicked. I couldn’t go through with it.” He takes a bitter, disgusted swig of his too-sweet blue drink and then looks at EJ despairingly. “What is wrong with me?”

“Maybe you’re getting soft,” EJ says, but he rushes ahead when Gabe scoffs and looks away. “Look, your job sucks, man. It’s not—I appreciate it, and all. I like peace. I like being able to swim out of our territory and not get attacked by a bunch of gorgons. I only have so many teeth, right? But it’s gotta be tough on you.”

“But it’s my job,” Gabe says. “My responsibility. And it’s not the kind of thing you just quit doing, right?”

Finally, EJ looks sad enough that he might be taking this seriously. Probably because he knows Gabe is right; if Gabe _is_ going soft, that’s bad news for him because there’s not much he can do about it. He’s not the only merman that collects humans for Nimue, but it’s not like anyone can tell her no. Pissing off the sea witch is a fast track to chaos and destruction, and Gabe isn’t going to bring that on his people.

He’s just going to have to get over it, Gabe decides. He polishes off his drink with a determined, final gulp and slams the glass down on the bartop. “Carl, another.”

“Make it to go, man,” EJ says, grabbing Gabe’s arm again. “We’ve got a seahorse race to see to.”

 

 

After a few more drinks and losing more than a few clamshells betting on seahorses, Gabe feels better equipped to put the incident out of his mind and move on. He still wants to talk to Adam—surely there are stories that can help him with this; surely he’s not the only merman to ever have this kind of reaction to a human, or the only one to ever encounter a human like this—but he wants to get over it more than that and prove to himself that it isn’t going to be an issue. It isn’t.

With an air of renewed determination, Gabe heads to another beach, this one far from Canada. He chats up a nice man on his honeymoon and gets him into the water in no time at all; the man doesn’t try to kiss him, just drowns like humans are supposed to, and Gabe brings him to Nimue with no trouble at all.

At least, there’s no trouble until he actually releases the man to her and starts backing out. He’s not quite fast enough; as Nimue is dismissing him, one of her mermen gets too overzealous and pulls down the curtain before the usual time.

And suddenly Gabe is faced with the heads of all the humans Nimue has consumed, faced with the fate of this man she’s already drawing to her, ready to destroy. Nimue loves married men and she’s very pleased but Gabe, in what is becoming a recurring theme for him nowadays, feels completely sick.

He leaves her palace feeling more unsure of himself than ever. When he closes his eyes that night in his soft kelp bed, he sees the heads of all the men, and then in a flash they are all Tyson’s head, repeated over and over. Gabe wrenches himself awake, breathing hard, and it’s a long time before he goes to sleep again.

Suddenly he’s too embarrassed to talk to Adam about this, or anyone really. He keeps doing his duty—he has to—but he can’t stop thinking about Tyson.

He tells himself it was just Tyson, that for some reason that one human got to him and he just can’t shake him, but that feels even more pathetic.

Most of all, Gabe remembers Tyson asking “Can I see you again?” and how ridiculous that sounded, how utterly absurd. But now it doesn’t feel that way, exactly. It still feels absurd but also too tempting, too powerful, as a single, horrifying truth becomes clear: he wants to see Tyson’s face again, and he never wants to see Tyson in Nimue’s palace. He wants to see Tyson outside of the context of drowning him.

It’s the most insane notion he thinks a merman has ever had, but that doesn’t stop him from swimming back to Vancouver Island just a few days later.

Gabe pops up by the rocky outcrop, cursing the gray, cloudy sky and the drizzle of rain. Nobody in their right mind would be at the beach today, so he’s definitely wasting his time and this is a terrible idea anyway—

“Wait!” someone calls, and Gabe turns slightly to see a small figure climbing down from the top of the rocks, waving his arms in the air.

The figure—Tyson, of course—is wearing a hooded rain poncho, shorts, and flip-flops, and he promptly trips down a steep pile of rocks and stumbles the rest of the way down, going, “Ouch, dammit,” as he skids down and lands on his hands and knees. Before Gabe quite knows what he’s doing, he’s swimming all the way into the shallow water pooled between the rocks, pulling himself up onto a rock and reaching out.

“Are you okay?” Gabe asks, as Tyson curses more and kind of crawls awkwardly towards him, scowling. He gets to Gabe’s rock and holds up two skinned palms, then grimaces down at his equally skinned knees.

“Ouch,” Tyson says again, his mouth a flat line until Gabe takes his arms in his hands to steady him. Then he brightens, eyes sparkling. “You’re back!”

“I’m back,” Gabe says, rolling his eyes. “How are you not dead yet?”

“Well, nobody’s tried to kill me since you did the other day, so I’ve had some luck lately,” Tyson says, shrugging. “Are you gonna try again now? Is that why you’re back?”

He looks so stupid in the rain poncho that Gabe wants to shake him. Certainly he wants to pull him into the water and shake him there, but also—no, he doesn’t want to kill him. Not even a little bit. Not even close.

“I’m not going to try and kill you, and if you thought that, you shouldn’t have come down here,” Gabe says firmly, giving Tyson a small shake that just makes him smile. “I told you, mermen are dangerous.”

“Not you, though,” Tyson says, and he sits down on Gabe’s rock, settling in close. His eyes widen a bit as they look over Gabe’s tail, curled up down the side of the rock, deep and bright green against the grayness of the day. “You’re a softie.”

“I am not a softie,” Gabe says, frowning deeply. Tyson grins.

“You totally are. You think you’re a killer whale but you’re actually a beluga.” Tyson looks proud of that comparison, but Gabe has never been so insulted in his life.

“How dare you! I’m not a _beluga_ , are you nuts, I’m a merman and I could destroy you against these rocks in two seconds.”

“So why aren’t you?” Tyson asks, raising his chin. Gabe opens his mouth and then closes it quickly, feeling the air of his righteous indignation start to fizzle out of his chest.

He scowls a bit at the bloody wrecks of Tyson’s hands and knees and nods at them. “Because you seem to be doing a good enough job of that on your own.”

Gabe’s surprised when Tyson laughs, but unfortunately not too surprised that he finds it charming and utterly captivating. “Yeah, okay,” Tyson says, shaking his head and pulling his arms out of Gabe’s hold to cross them over his chest. “Keep acting like a tough guy. You came _back_.”

“I came back,” Gabe says, resigned and a little defeated. Tyson studies his face for a moment, before leaning in and pressing his lips to his almost gently.

It’s a cautious, measured kiss, but Gabe feels it like a spark across his mouth, stinging his teeth. It breaks quickly, a crack of lightning across the water; the rain poncho hood slips back but Tyson keeps his forehead ducked into Gabe’s and doesn’t remove it. Gabe breathes deeply, feeling like he needs to get back in the water or suffocate, like he’s beached. He doesn’t move.

He breathes out, “What _are_ you?” in a voice that sound ridiculously wondrous to his own ears.

Tyson chuckles, and Gabe can feel his brow furrowing against his. “Uh, I’m just a regular dude. Not a mermaid.”

“Merman.”

“Sorry, Ariel.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Gabe says, but he’s not really mad when Tyson laughs, because he doesn’t sound like he’s laughing at him. Maybe he should be. He feels like everyone under the sea would be laughing at him, but he can’t really feel too worried about that yet.

He kisses Tyson again instead of worrying, wanting to taste him, to justify the rapid beat of his heart. Rain falls harder now, slapping into the churning waters behind them, slicking up their rocks, but they kiss through it, fingers tangled between them until Gabe shoves his through Tyson’s wet curls and eats up the pleased sound he makes in response.

When it breaks again, it’s been a while longer; the rain is falling so hard that Gabe can barely hear their breaths across it, puffing out between them. Tyson is shivering slightly and Gabe slips his hand down to cup Tyson’s cheek, frowning at him once more.

“You’re cold again.”

“Whatever,” Tyson says, so dismissively that Gabe has to laugh. He shakes his head.

“You should—get home. It’s not safe out here,” Gabe tells him, though he knows then and there that he would never let anything in his waters harm Tyson. He may feel beached but he is still himself, and he knows that at his core.

Tyson snorts, then looks at Gabe longer when he realizes he’s serious. “Oh, come on. I came here every day hoping you’d show up! And now you just want to send me away?”

Gabe tries to push the warmth he feels over Tyson’s words back at him, tries to cloud them over with guilt. “I don’t know why you did that. Again, I tried to—”

“But you didn’t,” Tyson says. His voice is raised over the rain, and his bright eyes are darkened with a kind of determination that makes Gabe question his species again. He didn’t think they made humans of this baffling, wonderful stock. He has never encountered one. “So there’s no point in harping on it. Get over it, man.”

“Merman.”

“Oh my god, it’s a—”

“I know, Tyson,” Gabe says, and Tyson jumps a little, like he hadn’t expected his own name to come out of Gabe’s mouth. It feels strange to Gabe too, in a thrilling and forbidding way.

He’s still cupping Tyson’s cheek. He doesn’t want to drop his hand, and it doesn’t look like Tyson wants him to either. But Tyson is shivering and Gabe can’t do anything about that on these rocks. He could pull Tyson into the water, pull him under, wrap him up in his arms and his tail and the warm, dark embrace of the sea, but the thought is scary right now, and he doesn’t let himself dwell on it.

Instead Gabe strokes his palm across the soft, chilled skin of Tyson’s face, lets his fingers drag over the cut of his jaw and lift his chin. “I have to go,” Gabe whispers, blinking against the force of the unhappiness in Tyson’s eyes, another flash of lightning.

“No, come on!”

“I’m sorry,” Gabe says, feeling ridiculous, meaning it. He presses another kiss to Tyson’s lips, soft and consoling. “I’m really sorry.”

“You should be. I tried everything to get you to come back. I brought fish food—”

“Oh, you are so—” Gabe cuts off into laughter he can’t keep down, and he feels and sees Tyson smiling.

“I brought a bunch of like, forks and mirrors and stuff, like she likes in the movie—”

“What movie?” Gabe asks exasperatedly, shaking his head. “And don’t throw trash into the water!”

“Okay, fine, I won’t have to because you’re coming back, right?”

Gabe sighs, and Tyson purses his lips. “Tyson…”

“You’re coming _back_ ,” Tyson says, tone brooking no argument, and Gabe finds himself nodding. This is the weirdest siren song he’s ever heard but he can’t deny it’s effective, and he takes Tyson’s hand in his and squeezes it.

“I’m coming back,” Gabe says solemnly, and he seals the words with one last kiss before slipping back into the water without so much as a splash.

“Say hi to Flounder for me!” Tyson calls, and Gabe rolls his eyes, wondering if Flounder knows Ariel and if either of them ever have any clue what Tyson is talking about.

 

 

Gabe comes back. He returns to Tyson’s rocks a few times, not every day, but often enough that every day wouldn’t be much of a difference in the long run, except to Gabe’s dignity. He comes back, and Tyson is always waiting for him like a sailor’s wife, sitting at the top of the rocks and staring out at the water like he’s just waiting for it to spit Gabe out. Sometimes he has Starbucks.

“Don’t you have a job?” Gabe asks the third time he finds Tyson there just waiting, watching him ease his way down the rocks on his ass to keep from falling like he always does. Gabe is waiting in the water now, watching Tyson tensely, feeling more useful here.

Tyson goes a little red, faint across his tan but clear for Gabe to see and relish. He shrugs, his eyes shifting a little. “Sure I do, but I work for my dad, so I can make my own schedule.”

He scuttles down another rock and scowls as a bit of it crumbles away. Gabe smiles at him.

“And that schedule is…?”

“Well it’s got lots of beach time, let’s put it that way.” And Tyson slips, the way he always does, starting to skid down the cliff too fast. This time, Gabe is finally ready, and with a flex of both his arms, he brings himself up on a tall, cresting wave and surges through the air to scoop Tyson up in the water.

The water pulls them back and settles them right where the shallows end, where Tyson’s toes strain to touch the sand. Tyson’s eyes are wide, bright and a little fearful, and that’s nearly enough to send Gabe into the dark folds of guilt before Tyson lets out a shaky but real laugh.

“Oh, you fucking showoff, get outta here with that!”

Gabe laughs too, and kisses him in the water, salty and somehow sweet.

They never stray too far from the shoreline, not even after Tyson finally proves he’s a capable enough swimmer. “I grew up on an island,” Tyson tells him, appalled when he realizes what Gabe thinks of him. “Of course I can swim. Jackass.”

“You can’t talk to me like that,” Gabe says. There is no danger in his voice, though, kitten soft, and he’s not even really embarrassed about it anymore. Maybe Tyson’s right. Maybe he is a beluga.

“I like the water,” Tyson says, like he’s not even listening to Gabe. They are treading water together, lips stinging from salt and kissing, and sunlight bobs across them, lighting up the depths of Tyson’s hair. “I love—you know. Sharks and stuff.”

“I’m friends with three sharks,” Gabe says plainly, relishing Tyson’s laugh and pressing his fingers against his ribcage. “They’re decent enough.”

“Oh my god. You’re a lunatic.”

“I’m not afraid of them. You don’t have to be afraid of your friends.” He doesn’t add that Tyson should be afraid of him, because Tyson just ignores him when he says that.

“Then you gotta introduce me sometime!” Tyson says, voice bright and wanting. When Gabe goes to protest, because that’s ridiculous, Tyson just leans in and kisses him, and Gabe doesn’t protest anymore. He doesn’t want to. He wants to bring Tyson the whole ocean, everything under the sea.

It’s a scary thought, scarier than sharks who aren’t his friends. When that kiss breaks, Gabe has to quietly deposit Tyson back on the shore, taking his turn to ignore Tyson’s arguments, and goes back under the sea.

He comes back to Tyson, though, the next day. He always comes back.

“So you know stories,” Gabe tells EJ at the race track, watching the seahorses zoom around in their kennels, waiting to be released. He knows better than to try and break EJ’s focus when a race is on, so he only has so much time here, and he hadn’t gotten back from the beach in time to catch him at the bar. These days, those are the only two places he can really find EJ.

“What kind of stories?” EJ asks warily.

“You know, from the old days?” When EJ just looks unimpressed, Gabe sighs. “When you were a teacher, remember that?”

He hadn’t wanted to come out and say it like that, because EJ seems to hate being reminded of those days. But EJ’s also being a stubborn jackass, so. Needs must.

“I wasn’t a teacher like Adam,” EJ says, looking bored. “I taught, you know—not stories. Fighting.”

“You taught heroes,” Gabe says, watching EJ flinch. He doesn’t add _but there aren’t any more heroes_ because there’s no need. They all know what Nimue has done for them, and what she’s taken away. “I get it. But you have to know _something_ , right?”

“Like what?”

“Like has a merman ever fallen in love with a human before?” Gabe asks all in a rush.

EJ opens his mouth to answer him but then the horn sounds and the seahorses tear out onto the track, racing through the water in blue and green blurs. Gabe loses EJ to the race and sighs, leaning his arms on the railing in front of him and tuning out EJ’s commentary, his noises of frustration and rage as his pick falls way behind and loses in what feels like a blink of an eye.

“Dude,” Gabe says when the race is over. “You are so bad at betting on seahorses.”

“I don’t think I asked, Gabe.” EJ stomps his front hooves angrily, kicking up sand from the ocean floor. Gabe rolls his eyes.

“Fine. Help me instead, you’re better at that. You have to have heard about this happening, right?”

“Why would any merpeople ever fall in love with a human?” EJ asks, and he slants a sidelong glance at Gabe. “No offense.”

“Offense taken.”

“I’m just saying, usually it’s the other way around. Humans are designed to fall in love with you guys and then get their hearts broken. That’s why you have a job, and why I—” EJ gestures sharply at himself, then vaguely at their surroundings; the crowd of merpeople and other sea species gathered together at the finish line, celebrating the winning seahorse. “—get to enjoy my retirement at the happiest place under the sea.”

“There’s no way it’s never happened before,” Gabe says hotly.

“Then go ask Adam if you don’t believe me,” EJ says just as hotly.

Gabe wishes he’d been earlier; he wishes he hadn’t brought up EJ’s past life. EJ is a good friend but he gets upset at the track and he gets upset when he thinks about the past for too long and he won’t help Gabe when he’s like this. And Gabe _can’t_ ask Adam, not when this is so embarrassing, when it seems like there’s a very real possibility that he’s a total freak. He can’t disappoint his older brother like that.

He was late because he’d been with Tyson. Gabe can never manage to regret his time with Tyson, which is kind of the whole problem, but it’s working against him here.

He gives up on answers, then, swimming off to leave EJ behind, ignoring the hints of cruelty in the teasing EJ lobs at his back as he goes. He’ll have to figure this out on his own, that’s very clear, and somehow that doesn’t do anything to keep him away from Tyson.

 

  
One day when they’re in the water, Tyson says, “So, normally at this point I’d ask you back to my place, but I’m guessing you can’t grow legs.”

Gabe squeezes Tyson’s hand and shakes his head, smiling fondly at him. “Nope. No legs.”

“Are you sure? Can’t you ask Ursula?”

“Who’s Ursula?”

“The sea witch!” Gabe suddenly goes cold; it feels like the water has grown choppy around him, darker and deeper.

“You—you know the sea witch?” Gabe asks, and the look on his face must be appropriately horrified, because Tyson’s eyes go wide.

“No, I mean—from the _movie_ ,” and Gabe feels the tightness in his chest start to unspool. It’s Tyson’s stupid mermaid movie, nothing more.

“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that that— _movie_ isn’t real and nothing in it is accurate and I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”

“Okay, fine, you don’t have to be a jerk about it.” Tyson crosses his arms over his chest to pout, like they’re not in the middle of the water and like he’s not supposed to be treading water. He doesn’t have to be at this point—Gabe has been carrying him in the water for days now, a strong enough swimmer for them both even without control of the currents, but Tyson had never indicated that he noticed.

Now Tyson looks ridiculous, sullen and annoyed, and Gabe’s chest tightens up again but this time with affection. “I’m not being a jerk.”

“You definitely are. You’re always a jerk, I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“I’m sorry,” Gabe says like an idiot. He should say _I am a jerk._ Or maybe _I’m a murderer and you should stay away from me for your own good._ He just says sorry, though, because he’s an idiot and a disgrace to his people.

That’s apparently exactly what Tyson wants to hear. “Good.”

“Good?”

“Make it up to me,” he says brightly, suddenly beaming. “Invite me under.”

Gabe laughs, shaking his head. “And how am I supposed to do that? Can you ask Ursula for gills?”

Tyson gives him a look. “You can make me breathe underwater.”

“No I can’t.”

“Yes you can!”

“Dammit, Tyson, what are you—”

Tyson has done a lot of unexpected things around him in the time they’ve known each other. At this point, Gabe mostly knows not to anticipate any normal reactions or logical thought processes from him ever. He’s starting to learn to expect the unexpected with him, to just continue being baffled, and that might be part of or even most of his charm.

Even so, Gabe is completely unprepared for what Tyson does next, which is grab his head with two hands and dunk him under the water. In his frantic moment of disorientation, Gabe lets Tyson go and feels him going under with him at the same time anyway, the currents not behaving, both of them sinking like they’re made of stone. Gabe opens his mouth to shriek, not for the first time, “What is _wrong_ with you?” but then he can’t say anything because Tyson’s mouth is on his.

As always, Gabe loses a large part of himself in the kiss, every drop of water on the planet falling away from him as Tyson’s lips touch his. It’s a deep, searching kiss, their mouths open and their tongues dipped against each other.

Gabe’s eyes slip closed only for a moment before they fly open. He tries to wrench away, to push up towards the surface— _Tyson_ , Tyson will drown, Tyson can’t breathe and it feels just like that first day, just like the worst thing Gabe ever almost did—but Tyson uses that strength that can’t be real again and keeps Gabe still.

He realizes in a few frantic seconds that Tyson is inhaling against his mouth, and it’s still terrifying— _Tyson is drowning_ —but he’s frozen to do much else besides breathe into Tyson. The kiss feels more like resuscitation, then, like a lifeline, and when it drags on Gabe gets the distinct feeling that that’s exactly what it is.

Finally, Tyson breaks away with a serene smile and stares at Gabe. He isn’t drowning, not like that first day; his mouth is open slightly but only to show his white teeth, his happiness. His chest is rising and falling normally, and when Gabe desperately puts his hands on it, he can feel his heart beating steadily and easily.

He is _breathing_. Gabe sucks in a wondrous breath of his own and stares at Tyson with wide eyes.

“How?” he asks, wondering if Tyson can even hear him when Tyson just shrugs.

And then Tyson speaks, like he’s not fully human, like he has all the oxygen in the world under here in the water in his floral swim trunks and nothing else—his bare feet and his real toes and his gently kicking, thoroughly human legs. “I saw it in a dream and I thought it would work,” Tyson says.

Gabe gapes at him. “You _thought_? You didn’t know?”

“Well I figured if it didn’t work, you’d just save me again,” Tyson tells him casually. “And if it did work, you know, you’d get to take me down there and show me around. I want to meet your shark friends. So, win-win.”

“How is nearly drowning and _dying_ a win, Tyson?”

“I told you, because you’d save me!”

“You’re completely ridiculous, and insane.” And Gabe’s heart won’t stop pounding in his chest like he’s the one drowning, like he’s the one dying. He thinks he understands a little, why it would be worth it to Tyson. He thinks he feels the same way.

“But you love me anyway,” Tyson says. He takes one of Gabe’s hands where it’s still wrapped around his ribcage and smiles that same content, smug smile.

“Did you dream that too?” Gabe asks, and Tyson shakes his head.

“Nope. That one I just knew.”

“I can’t believe you,” Gabe says, but there is something thrilled and exhilarated bursting through his blood, triumphant fireworks going off in his mind. Tyson is human but he’s not quite ordinary. There is some magic in him, there has to be. He’s ridiculous and too cavalier with his own life and frankly absurd but he’s something incredible, too, something otherworldly. Not Gabe’s world or the surface world but something more than that, and Gabe swells with pride.

He’s not embarrassed anymore, or ashamed. He holds Tyson’s hand and says, “Come on, let me show you where I’m from,” and twists through the water with Tyson in his arms.

Gabe starts them slow, and he’s glad for that once it becomes apparent that Tyson can’t actually stay down here indefinitely. After a few hours he says, “Hey, I think I have to go back up,” and then “Slowly, eh?” and Gabe takes him back to BC waters in a flash but they swim upwards carefully, gently.

Tyson gasps when they break the surface, and the sun has gone low. Gabe has shown Tyson his house, the seagrass, the seahorse tracks, the bar. They’ve said hi to merpeople but none of Gabe’s family and not for very long; slowly, Gabe has decided. This has been the best day of his life and he knows now he can stretch it out as long as he wants.

In a few more trips under the sea, Tyson meets the sharks; Gabe may have exaggerated their friendship a little but nobody gets eaten so he counts it as a win. Tyson is more afraid of the sharks than Gabe had thought he’d be, and he’s afraid of the hippocampi too, which makes Gabe laugh.

Tyson seems to have zero fear of Carl, somehow sensing that he’s the gentlest monster in the ocean, more kindness in his single eye than all the other creatures combined. He calls every crab he meets Sebastian, which gets him a good few pinches but nothing worse than that.

“You’re safe under here,” Gabe tells him, feeling like it’s absolutely true, like they’re invincible. That’s probably foolish but Gabe can’t help how he feels; that’s become readily apparent to him ever since he met Tyson. “I won’t ever let anything hurt you.”

He kind of doesn’t mention about Nimue’s protection. Tyson totally buys into Gabe as his hero. He tells a group of young clownfish all about how Gabe had rescued him in the water, neglecting to mention that Gabe had been the one trying to drown him in the first place. He grips Gabe’s hand hard and hides behind him when they meet EJ, furiously whispering, “What is _that_?” and shrinking back when EJ stomps his hooves and swishes his fish tail in annoyance, baring his lack of teeth.

“That’s just EJ,” Gabe says, squeezing Tyson’s hand, smiling tentatively at EJ’s scowling, baffled face.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” EJ says later at the track, right before he takes another bath betting on the wrong seahorse and tries to pick a fight with an octopus. Gabe rolls his eyes when EJ doesn’t have any advice more than that, because apparently giving advice to merpeople isn’t part of his job description anymore.

Not that he’d be advising Gabe if it were in his job description anyway, because Gabe isn’t a hero. But—the more time he spends with Tyson, the more Gabe feels like a hero, and he kind of likes the feeling. It’s definitely better than the feeling he gets when he drowns people.

He still has to keep that part of himself going, though. More and more, Gabe wants to quit it; every time he goes back to Nimue he feels like she can sense it, too, like he’s not fooling anybody even as he continues to do his duty. The problem is that Gabe isn’t sure how long he can keep his duty up, and he’s afraid of what might happen if he can’t.

Gabe tries not to worry about it, and well. That’s probably foolish too.

 

On a clear, cooler day in the fading summer, Gabe asks Tyson if he wants to meet his family.

“Hell yeah,” Tyson says, of course. They dip under the water and Gabe kisses Tyson into breathing and they start swimming into the Baltic, twisting for home waters.

Gabe’s a little nervous, he has to admit. He still hasn’t really told anyone about Tyson, but he feels like there could be no better way to tell them. Tyson is captivating, charming—the sea creatures like him, even as they sometimes roll their eyes at him. EJ has come around as much as he can, though he’s still wary, but Gabe knows that will pass. It’s Tyson. He can’t imagine anyone not loving Tyson.

They swim deep, ducking past herds of hippocampi, scattering a school of clownfish and laughing at their indignation, stopping very briefly to chat with Gabe’s dolphin friend, Mikko. When Mikko swims away, chattering with laughter at their joined hands, Gabe rolls his eyes and says, “Come on,” and moves to keep them going, but Tyson stays still.

“What is it?” Gabe asks, turning to register the slightly stunned look on Tyson’s face.

“Do you hear that?” Tyson says, and when Gabe shakes his head, straining to hear anything, Tyson starts tugging him in the opposite direction of the kingdom.

“Hear what?” Gabe allows himself to be towed along, something he does way too much considering he can control the currents and Tyson can’t. He glances back in the direction of his home and then smiles at Tyson, so determined, straining through the water.

They’ve gone pretty far before Tyson says, in a dreamy sort of voice, “That song,” and Gabe’s stomach drops.

He hears it then, too: Nimue’s singing echoing across the ocean floor, soft and sweet and suffocating. “Tyson,” Gabe says, voice shaking, swimming to cut in front of him and look at his face more clearly. “Tyson, _no_.”

Tyson doesn’t seem to hear him, trying to push around him. The singing suddenly sounds closer, even though they haven’t gone very far—but when Gabe looks back again, the familiar cliffs and ocean floor valleys of his home are gone, and so are any friendly faces. They are surrounded by dying seagrass, as tall as the strips surrounding Gabe’s kingdom but more sickly-looking, dull brown and beige. Gabe’s heart pounds.

“It’s beautiful,” Tyson says, his breathing gone ragged. He’s looking around them too, still drifting towards the song, and Gabe wonders what he sees, what Nimue’s magic has done to him. Gabe grips his hand as tight as he can and wills the currents to cooperate, too, to bring Tyson closer to him, but Tyson keeps fighting him. “No, Gabe, I have to—”

“You _can’t_ ,” Gabe says, his voice loud and high and cutting through the sea witch’s song. There is a beat of muted, far away silence, and Tyson blinks and looks at their joined hands.

And then the seagrass explodes around them. Gabe tugs Tyson to him protectively and just in time—a crowd of Nimue’s adoring merpeople emerge from below and begin grasping at them, snarling and moaning. These aren’t the guards, no one civilized or in their right minds: this is the warped, maddened group of admirers that embody Nimue’s palace, slaves to her every whim for nothing worthwhile in return.

“Human,” they hiss, hands grasping for all four of Tyson’s limbs, scratching at Gabe when he pushes them desperately away. “He is _ours_.”

“No,” Gabe says, pulling Tyson tight to him with one arm, wrapping his tail around his legs. “No, he’s _not—_ ”

“We will take him to our mistress,” the merpeople say, all at once and somehow echoing each other too, in low, cracked voices. They throw sand at his face, trying to blind him, and Gabe tucks Tyson into his chest, feeling him tremble against him.

“You _won’t_!”

“Remember your duty,” the merpeople say, and Gabe’s heart clenches. “Remember your deal.”

“Not this one,” Gabe tells them. He pulls a whirlpool out of the currents and tries to put it between them and the merpeople, and Tyson gasps as they just push right through it like ghosts.

“He is _ours_ ,” they say again, their voices raised, their magic humming through the air. They raise their arms to strike, Nimue’s song suddenly loud enough to hurt, swirling into the whirlpool around them.

“ _No_ ,” Gabe snarls, and then, “He’s mine!”

And with that last exclamation, Gabe twists them through the water, bursting out of the top of the whirlpool with Tyson clutched protectively to him. He closes his eyes and wills the currents to cooperate, feeling the last hints of the merpeople’s ragged hands and sharp nails clawing at his tail before they’ve traveled instantly to safer waters.

Gabe can smell and feel BC above them, now as familiar to him as his home. He brings them to the surface as carefully as he always does, this time trembling as much as Tyson, and they both gasp when they break the surface. “Come on,” Gabe says, and he brings Tyson to shore without lingering like they usually do, not feeling fully safe until Tyson’s feet are touching solid rock.

Tyson’s barely hit the ground before he’s springing up and grasping Gabe’s arms, keeping him from slipping right back into the sea. “What the _fuck_ was that,” Tyson asks, fingers pressing so hard into Gabe’s skin that Gabe thinks he might feel it later. He kind of hopes so, and that’s what makes him fully confront the desperate fear inside him right now, the clear helplessness.

“Oh god,” Gabe says, curling up on Tyson’s rock, clutching him back. “Tyson, I—”

“Was that your family?”

The last thing Gabe expects to do under the circumstances is burst into laughter, but in that moment he can’t help it. “No,” he gasps, shaking his head. There are tears forming at the corners of his eyes, and Gabe blinks them away desperately. “No, that wasn’t—”

“Okay then, again, what the fuck?”

“That song you heard,” Gabe says, shaking his head again to clear it this time. “That was the sea witch. Nimue.”

Tyson blinks. “Nim—what?”

“It’s—she’s—she’s a sorceress. She rules over the whole sea, basically, and she protects the merpeople, my people.” Gabe feels an old, bitter shame rise up in his throat, but he can’t keep the truth from Tyson, not know. “In exchange, we— _I_ , bring her humans to, ah. Eat.”

“To eat,” Tyson repeats, staring blankly. “Humans, she eats—oh my god.”

“I know. Tyson, I know, I’m sorry—”

“That’s why you were trying to drown me,” Tyson says, eyes going wide. “You were going to feed me to Nimbus!”

“Nimue.”

“Whatever! You were going to let some old sea hag eat me?”

Gabe might be imagining it—no, he probably isn’t, they’re in exactly this much shit—but he feels the water tremble slightly behind them, shaking with offense. “That’s what was supposed to happen. But obviously I—I didn’t go through with it.”

“No,” Tyson says slowly. “You didn’t.” Suddenly he flushes, ducking his head. “You kept me instead.”

“Tyson—”

“You told those crazy fish people that I was yours,” he continues, and now it’s Gabe’s turn to flush. “Is that true?”

Gabe feels the weight of Tyson’s question across his chest like an anchor, mired in every beat of his stupid heart. “I—I’d like it to be.”

It’s so ridiculous, so outrageous, but it’s the truth. Gabe can’t lie, has never been very good at being in denial. He can’t hold feelings like this back.

But it’s also not as simple as what he just said, and he rushes to make that clear as Tyson just blinks at him, still very pink, but a small smile starting to tug at his lips. Gabe has to curtail that.

“But that doesn’t even matter, because now—”

“Now what?”

“—now it’s too dangerous!” Gabe basically yells, his fear rising up again and bursting out of him like a cresting wave. “She knows I spared you, she knows you were meant to be hers, and—she won’t stop until she has you.” He knows this as if it were explained to him carefully, painted across the ocean floor or threaded through Adam’s stories. Gabe knows how Nimue thinks, knows what she feels entitled to.

The water will never be safe for Tyson again, and while that absolutely sickens Gabe, the thought of something happening to Tyson on his account feels worse.

“You told me you would never let anything hurt me,” Tyson says, and Gabe curses silently. “You said I’d always be safe under the water. You can’t protect me?”

“I can’t risk it,” Gabe says, his voice breaking. He doesn’t even know what’s going to happen to him under the water; he can’t imagine bringing Tyson back down there.

Tyson’s eyes are blazing, his jaw set. “But I’m yours. You said so.”

“Tyson—”

“You saved me. You wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me.”

“I might not be able to stop it!” Gabe starts slipping back, trying to pull his arms free from Tyson’s hands, gasping as he clamps down. “Let me go.”

“Not a chance.”

“I have to go, I can’t see you—”

“ _No_ ,” Tyson yells, his voice breaking too. He looks frantic in the next moment, face slipping from pink to pale, and genuine fear makes his words shake. “No, you can’t—you have to come back.”

“I don’t think I can.” Gabe feels like his heart is being smashed with a mallet. “It’s too dangerous. I have to go down there and talk to Nimue, explain—hope she’ll understand. You need to stay on land, where you’re safe.”

“You cannot go down there and talk to her, what the _fuck_ Gabe! She’s obviously crazy! What if she eats you?”

“She won’t eat me,” Gabe says. “I’m not human. She only eats humans.” He doesn’t mention that if Nimue wants to punish him, she’ll find a way; that’s not going to make Tyson let go of him. “I have to go.”

“Look, there’s no way—”

“I _have_ to! I can’t risk anything bad happening to you.”

“So you’d rather just dump me on the rocks? Fuck off. There’s no way.”

“Tyson—”

“If I’m yours, then you’re mine,” Tyson says through gritted teeth. He is so, so strong, and Gabe doesn’t understand what magic he has but he loves it so much it hurts; loves Tyson so much it’s a real, physical ache. “And I’m not letting you go and leave me.”

“Let me just try,” Gabe pleads. “I have to try. I’ll go and—”

“You have three days,” Tyson tells him. The light is back in his eyes, bright and hard, and his tone brooks no argument. “Three days to try—whatever you think you can do, and then I’m coming in after you.”

“What? You can’t do that, you’ll—”

“If I drown, I drown,” Tyson says, shrugging casually, though his tone is deathly serious. “If you save me, I win again. Another win-win.”

“Don’t be stupid, nobody wins if you drown. I won’t let that happen.”

“Then you’d better be back here in three days.” Tyson finally lets Gabe go, crossing his arms over his chest. “Three days and that’s it. And today counts as a day.”

“What? How is that—”

“Three. Days. Figure your shit out and come back to me.” Tyson’s nostrils flare, and there is nothing soft or forgiving in his face. There is only that strength that Gabe doesn’t understand, full and real.

Gabe opens his mouth to keep arguing. The fear in him is too big, too overwhelming—he thinks it’s one he’s felt for a while now, as the reality of working for Nimue has set in, the full impact of what he does reaching every part of him. Now, he is watching that impact play across Tyson’s face, the consequences of his agreement with her finally coming fully to light.

He can’t lose Tyson, not to her—but the problem is that she gets anybody. He’ll lose Tyson either way unless he fixes the real issue and finally frees himself from Nimue’s service. It’s been apparent for a while that he needs to do that, but now it’s all too clear: there are no other options for him, not really. Nothing that he can live with.

He doesn’t know if he can do that in three days, but he knows right then that he has to try.

“Okay,” Gabe says instead of arguing. His shoulders slump in defeat. “Three days.”

“Hell yeah,” Tyson says. He grins, something wild and a little feral. “Three days. Because you’re mine.”

“And because you’re mine,” Gabe says, trying to borrow Tyson’s strength, the hardness in his voice. He leans in and presses one firm, insistent kiss on his lips, a promise. He’s going to fix this. He’s going to figure out a way.

Gabe tosses himself back into the water with the force of a torpedo; three days is not a lot of time.

 

 

Three days is _really_ not a lot of time, especially when Gabe doesn’t have much of a plan.

His first idea is to find a human, bring him to Nimue the old-fashioned way, and try to talk her down with one last offering. He’s halfway to Lake Michigan before he realizes that would be wrong, that he can’t keep following her orders if he wants to free himself and his people from her rule. He can’t do that anymore, and he thinks that would’ve been true with or without Tyson.

So Gabe changes tracks, setting out for the relative safety of his kingdom to regroup and come up with a more palatable idea. He tries not to sweat out the time lost, and hopes it’s a quick and easy trip, though none of his waters feel that way anymore.

Of course, he gets attacked again in sight of the familiar green seagrass, wrestling with a deranged cyclops with a single glowing, purple eye. “You will come with me,” the cyclops orders, voice booming around Gabe so loudly that he has to cover his ears. 

Gabe’s lucky that the cyclops is clearly meant to capture and not kill, otherwise he’s pretty sure he’d be dead. The cyclops has a club and takes a baseball swing at his head, clipping his arm when Gabe flails out of the way, but the size difference is really unfortunate, twice Gabe’s size and even twice Carl’s, and Gabe has nothing but the water to defend himself with.

He tries to swim for it, trusting that the monster won’t be able to breach the magical barrier, but the cyclops grabs him by the tail and yanks him back, spinning him through the water. Dizzy and trying to regain his bearings, Gabe just manages to get himself out of the cyclops’ hold and throw his arms up in front of him as the cyclops swings with the club again, trying to connect with any part of Gabe it can get.

Gabe closes his eyes, but before he feels anything hit him, he hears a fleshy thud and then the cyclops roaring around him, sending air bubbles through the water. Then he hears stomping hooves in sand and the click and screech of a dolphin and opens his eyes to find EJ and Mikko swimming in front of him, shielding him from the cyclops.

EJ has a crossbow raised, and the cyclops has an arrow sticking out of its thigh.

“Take Gabe back,” EJ says, reloading the crossbow and then taking aim. “I’ve got this.”

Mikko chatters an affirmative and slaps Gabe with a pectoral fin until he takes hold of his dorsal fin and allows himself to be towed through the barrier. He looks back when he hears another roar from the cyclops, terrified for his friend, but in a burst of sand and air bubbles EJ appears right behind them, yelling, “Go, move it!” and ushering them both ahead.

They make it through the barrier in another moment, and the cyclops’ groans and shouted threats fade behind them into nothingness. Gabe feels faint with relief and stares at EJ and Mikko in wonder, his heart pounding.

“You saved me.”

“You’re an idiot,” EJ snaps, shaking his head. “What are you doing picking a fight with Tom? He doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together and all he ever wants is to hurt people.”

“I didn’t—Tom? No, never mind, it doesn’t matter—I didn’t pick a fight with him, I swear.” Gabe braces himself, trying to be comforted by Mikko’s reassuring bumps. “It’s Nimue.”

EJ goes pale. “Oh for Triton’s _sake_ —come on. You owe me like 40 drinks for this.”

They leave Mikko to head back to his pod and, trying not to flinch when faced with Carl’s kind stare, sit at their usual seats at the bar. Gabe tells EJ everything, watching his face get progressively more drawn even as he downs drink after drink until he’s swaying slightly in the water, and his tail won’t stop fluttering.

When Gabe gets to the part where he only has three days to release himself and everyone else from the sea witch’s power, EJ starts shaking his head.

“Are you out of your _mind_? That’s not happening, Gabe.”

“Look, it has to happen, okay? I can’t live like this anymore. _We_ can’t live like this.”

“Nobody likes Nimue, all right, I get it. And it can’t be fun doing her bidding all the time, but—you’re suggesting a _revolt_ , and you have no plan. All for some biped who winked at you? Come on, man. Use your head.”

“It’s not just for Tyson,” Gabe says, ignoring the look EJ fixes him. “It’s for everyone. It’s for—it’s for you, too.”

“You’re not doing me any favors, you brat. I remember what it was like before Nimue. All the monster attacks, idiots like Tom roaming around and bashing heads in every chance he got.” EJ’s voice breaks a little. “All the—we used to lose heroes all the time, you know? Now there aren’t any heroes anymore, and everyone’s safe. It’s better now.”

“It’s not better,” Gabe insists. “It can’t be better while we’re killing people.”

“It’s just humans.”

“Humans are people, EJ!”

“Whatever, man,” EJ says. “I can’t support this. You’re going to get yourself killed and I’ve dealt with enough of you idiots to know I can’t stop you.”

“You can’t stop me, but you can help me.”

“And how can I help you, Gabe?”

“You can teach me to defend myself,” Gabe says, realizing it’s necessary as he says it. He’s good in the water and he can charm any human he needs to, but his encounter with Tom the cyclops has shown him just how ill-prepared he is in actual combat. “You can teach me to fight.”

“You really think you can take on Nimue?” EJ asks, laughing. “You’re insane.”

Gabe shrugs. “No, not really. But I know I have to try, and the only way I’ll have a chance is if you help me.”

“This is a terrible idea.”

“No it’s not, I know you’re a good teacher.”

“I know I am, but you’re—you’re going to get killed.” EJ finishes off his drink, shaking his head again and then looking Gabe straight in the eye. “That human—he’s worth it?”

Gabe doesn’t break his gaze. “Yeah, he is.”

He onlys allows himself a day and a half to train with EJ; there just isn’t enough time for much else. And even when EJ gives him a trident to wield, even when it feels strangely right in his hand and when EJ’s barked directions make some kind of sense to him, he knows it’s not going to be nearly enough. The old heroes trained for years, going through boot camp, becoming disciplined and strong.

Gabe feels like a joke in contrast, a little merkid playing pretend. He knows EJ is frustrated with him, though he still outright refuses to help any further than training, but there’s nothing to be done about it. He’s running out of time.

He feels only marginally better with the trident strapped to his back, at least armed with something. “You’re not even close to ready,” EJ says, face creased with worry.

Gabe tries to give him his brightest, friendliest grin. “I’ll figure it out. You know I’m quick on my fins.”

“You’re an idiot.” He clasps Gabe’s upper arms and squeezes him a little. “Listen, don’t—don’t die.”

“Not planning to.”

“Are you sure about that? What even is your plan?”

“Don’t die,” Gabe says, his smile widening. EJ cracks one back at him, toothless and real, and then releases him. Gabe feels the loss of his touch acutely, and promises himself he’ll see EJ again very soon. He has to do this for all of them, and EJ will see that someday.

And EJ is right; he’s not ready, and he still doesn’t have a plan. That means it’s time to finally talk to Adam.

 

 

Gabe finds his older brother in his home, brushing past seaweed curtain doors and drifting down into Adam’s library. Carved into sea cliffs are dozens and dozens of shelves of glowing, protected books, some of the oldest in the sea. Adam sits in the center of the cavernous library, studying one such book, but he looks up and smiles when he sees Gabe.

“Hey there, stranger. Been busy?”

“You could say that,” Gabe says, wincing. He takes a deep breath.

He doesn’t tell Adam _everything_. Maybe he should know better by now, but he doesn’t think Adam will help him at all if he knows how ill-prepared Gabe is or the extent of what he wants to do. He mostly tells Adam about Tyson, and how Nimue wants Tyson, and how he has to stop her from getting him.

Adam’s smile slides off his face anyway, growing graver and more shadowy the more that Gabe talks. “Gabe,” he says at one point, shaking his head and running his fingers through his hair. His tail, a rich, earthy brown, swishes worriedly through the water below him. “This is crazy.”

“I know, but—” Gabe swallows hard. “There has to be some kind of story that can help me, right? There has to be a way to release us from her.”

“The only way Tyson will ever be safe from her is if he’s on land,” Adam says. “He needs to stay out of the water for the rest of his life. Nimue will be reasonable with you if you talk to her, maybe if you bring Mom and Dad, but Tyson—you should never have brought him down here.”

Gabe feels his face heat up. “But I—I love him.”

Adam’s own face softens at that, but he still shakes his head. “That only makes him more enticing to Nimue. You know that she loves humans that belong to someone else. And—I’m sorry, but this is kind of unprecedented. Merpeople don’t fall in love with surface dwellers. It’s supposed to be the other way around.”

“But it shouldn’t be that way anymore,” Gabe says angrily, clenching his fists. “Humans are more than just our toys to play with, or for Nimue to eat. Our protection isn’t worth their lives.”

Adam’s eyes widen at that. “Gabe, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying—things need to change. And if it takes me falling in love with Tyson to make that happen, then—then so be it. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect him and protect us.” He gives Adam a hard, determined look, emulating Tyson for a moment. “Are you going to help me?”

Adam stares back at him, searching his face. When he nods, it’s very hesitant, but he gives him a squeeze of a side hug and then swims up towards the shelves. “Of course I will,” Adam says, calling down from one of the highest shelves. “You’re my brother. I’ll always help you.”

He picks out a book and swims back down again, smiling a little sheepishly. “I actually, um, kind of lied before. Not entirely, it’s just—sea creatures have fallen in love with surface dwellers before. Well, at least one of them has.” He flips open the book and shows Gabe an inked drawing that makes him suck in a shocked breath. “Nimue, but she wasn’t under the sea then. She lived in a lake.”

Adam tells him the story the way he tells all of his stories, like he’s far away and reliving them as if he’d been there. As Gabe listens, he can almost see it formed in bubbles around them: Nimue meets a powerful surface dweller who has magic. She asks him to teach her and he obliges, freely giving her all his secrets until she rivals him in power, and she falls in love.

There is a king, too, who has no magic, but he is the magic surface dweller’s friend. They live together in a realm Nimue can’t reach, because she doesn’t yet have her legs. Her magic surface dweller tells her that he’ll use his magic to join her in the lake, but she has to give the king her most prized possession: a powerful sword that has never left the lake and can only be wielded by the worthiest of heroes.

Nimue agrees, and she comes out of the lake just far enough to give the king the sword. She asks when her magic love will come to join her, and the king only smiles. “He’ll be along soon,” he says.

So Nimue waits, and waits, until in her heart she knows her love won’t return. She begins to hate, and soon the hate bubbles around her until she can control it just like the magic her love had taught her.

Nimue gives herself legs, and walks out of the lake. When she returns, she has the king’s head dangling from one hand, the sword in the other, and her love trailing behind her, entranced. The sword drags on the ground and she knows she is unworthy of wielding it now, so she turns and places it on her love’s chest, fitting his hands over it.

“You will keep this for all eternity, and I will keep you,” Nimue says. She waves her hands and roots and soil weave themselves over her love until he and the sword have disappeared. Then she falls back into her lake with a powerful splash, and the bubbles in front of Gabe’s eyes dissolve into nothing.

“That sword,” comes Adam’s voice, breaking into Gabe’s reverie. “It’s her only weakness. But that’s not the point of that story, Gabe. You’ll never be able to find it.”

“Then what’s the point?” Gabe asks, swallowing hard, already knowing that this is what he’ll have to do.

Adam sighs. “The point is that you can’t trust surface dwellers. Even when you love them, and they might love you. There’s always—the magic surface dweller probably did love Nimue. He gave her all his magic, everything he had. But he was from a different world. He was loyal to his king and Nimue couldn’t break that. Your Tyson—he’ll feel the same way, eventually. You can’t live your life at the shoreline, and you both have to know that deep down.”

Gabe takes a shuddering breath, looking down at the book again. He looks at the picture of Nimue, rising from the lake, holding the sword up to hand to the king. Nimue’s eyes hold the same fear that Gabe feels burbling through his blood, the trembling notion that Adam is right.

But Gabe closes his eyes, and shakes his head. Even if he can’t live his life at the shoreline, he still has to do this. It’s about more than just Tyson, more than true love; there are no other options, with or without Tyson.

“I’m going to find the sword,” Gabe says slowly, and Adam gives a soft, disapproving groan. “I’m going to find it and fix this. I have to.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Adam says, but when he looks up again he looks resigned, if grim. “I guess I’d better help you find it, huh?”

 

 

The thing is, there isn’t actually time to _find_ the sword, not with his Tyson deadline looming. For all that this isn’t about just Gabe and Tyson anymore, Gabe won’t break that promise.

He and Adam spend the rest of the time he has tearing through the library, trying to find hints as to where the sword could be. When the time is nearly up, Gabe tells Adam to keep looking and that he’ll be back; he has to talk to Tyson, explain that there’s something of a plan, and to buy more time.

“Good luck with that,” Adam says, smirking even though he’s never met Tyson.

Gabe can’t help feeling that Adam’s hit the mark, because he knows it’s not going to be an easy discussion with Tyson.  

It’s not one that he can put off any longer, though, so Gabe swims for the surface world, a few familiar twists and turns until he’s breaking out into BC waters again. He has his trident clutched in two hands but meets no resistance on the way, and he straps it to his back once more before he turns to face the shoreline.

The sun is just starting to set and Gabe slices through the water like it’s liquid gold, rippling with twilight all around him. He steels his shoulders as he nears land, seeing Tyson sitting serenely on his usual rock—his usual swim trunks and nothing else, though he has to be cold at this time of day.

He doesn’t seem cold, or even all that worried as Gabe draws near, which Gabe kind of envies. He feels like his heart in his throat. He has no idea how this is going to go, if Tyson is going to give him any more time or—he doesn’t know the alternatives. He doesn’t want to think about those. 

“Hi,” Gabe says nervously as he approaches, and Tyson gives him a small sort of smile. 

“Hey. You’re late.”

Gabe balks. “I am not! What the hell, it’s only been—”

“Sundown on the third day, I think that makes you late,” Tyson says, inspecting his fingernails, but the little smile that won’t leave his face gives it all away. Gabe pulls himself onto the rock and leans in to Tyson’s space, fitting his hands over his. 

“Are you cold?” he asks, and Tyson just shakes his head and fits his mouth over his silently. It’s a desperate, searching kiss, and when it breaks Gabe feels as if every part of his heart has been scrubbed out and examined, pinned under a microscope. 

It’s quiet as they sit on their rock and look at each other. Tyson looks like he’s waiting for Gabe to start, and Gabe is trying to find the words when Tyson suddenly laughs and shakes his head. 

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing, it’s just—” A foghorn sounds, off in the distance, and Tyson throws his smile out to the sea, eyes sparkling once again. “You’ve got a frickin trident, man. You were serious down there.”

“Tyson, I haven’t—”

“I know,” Tyson says. His eyes are so warm, and he flips his hand up to lace his fingers through Gabe’s. Gabe breathes him in, his sandy, earthy scent, and distantly hopes that Adam is wrong about humans. Even more distantly, Gabe knows that he is. He has to be. “I didn’t think you were going to do it. Not in three days.”

Gabe’s brow is drawn. “Then why did you give me an impossible time limit?”

“Because if it was four days, you would’ve actually tried,” Tyson says, rolling his eyes. “And you’d be dead. No, it’s not going to work like that.”

“Then how’s it going to work?” 

“We’ll do it together,” Tyson says. And Gabe opens his mouth but he doesn’t manage to repeat “ _How_?” like he means to because he knows, then. He knows as Tyson says it, plain and easy, like it’s the most possible thing in the world. “You’re going to turn me into a merman.”

Gabe’s heart pounds, and he looks down at their joined hands. “Am I really?” He’s shaking.

“Yep,” Tyson says, letting the _p_ pop in his mouth. 

“Let me guess, this is something else you saw in a dream.”

“You got it, man.”

He studies Tyson and wonders if he knows the story. He wonders if Tyson is his magic love, if he’s supposed to have been learning more from Tyson than he did. Gabe is pretty sure he couldn’t have learned anything more important from him than what they have together, but he can’t help but wonder. 

“You don’t really think this is going to work, right?” Gabe whispers, leaning forward until their foreheads touch. He feels Tyson nod, slow and gentle. 

“Yes. I know it will.”

“And—and you’d give up your life on land to do this? To be with me?”

“Of course I would,” Tyson tells him, shrugging. “I don’t have much of one anyway. But even if I did—”

“Why?” Gabe asks, holding his breath for the answer. It’s another answer he knows before it arrives, though, can hear Tyson saying it as if it’s an echo.

“Because I’m yours,” Tyson breathes out, and Gabe breathes out with him. 

“And I’m yours,” Gabe says, shaking his head before claiming Tyson’s mouth in another kiss, this one hard and desperate. 

Somehow he’s still caught off guard when Tyson pushes him off the rock. There’s a moment where Gabe is thrust into the water and Tyson is still up above him, looking down at him, that he wonders—there is a flash of doubt, Adam’s voice in his head telling him again that he can’t live life at the shoreline. 

And then the doubt is gone with a splash because Tyson throws himself in after him, laughing, flinging himself into Gabe’s quickly opening arms. “Come on,” he says, wriggling around for a bit, until his swim trunks suddenly pop up in the water next to them, floating across the darkening surface. 

“I don’t even know what to do,” Gabe says, but he’s laughing too, feeling giddy and ridiculous and in love. 

“Yes you do,” Tyson says, and he pulls Gabe under and kisses him until he’s breathing easily, and then some more for good measure.

And then together they’re racing for the bottom, a straight shot down, Gabe pushing the water around them until it pushes back and sinks them faster. Tyson shoots ahead of him, giving Gabe a final view of his kicking legs, the swell of his ass and his basic, human nakedness, before he’s arrived at the ocean floor.

There, farther down than any human could ever hope to tread, Tyson lies down in a bed of underwater flowers, thousands of kilometers beneath his homeland. For a moment he has his arms crossed in front of him, and like a flash Gabe sees Nimue’s magic love, roots and dirt knitting across him, encasing him forever.

But then Tyson reaches up for Gabe and pulls him on top of him. He spreads his legs and wraps them around Gabe’s tail, keeping him pinned against him, chest to chest and waist to waist and then mouth to mouth, smiling into it. He sighs into every kiss and Gabe kisses him greedily, feeding him one after the other, until he feels like he might drown from it. 

He’s vaguely aware of bubbles forming all around them; a strong wind flows across the ocean floor, and up, up above he hears the foghorn again, distant and dreamy as if from another world entirely. Gabe ignores it all, focuses just on being in Tyson’s arms, the perfect feel of his strong body beneath his, bursting with life. 

The sea flowers sway around them, brilliant blues and pinks and greens, bursts of color against the deep dark sea. Gabe doesn’t see anything except for Tyson, the peak of his nose, the red of his lips, and it’s a few moments like that before he can feel anything else, either. 

But he does eventually feel the difference in Tyson’s legs—namely that he doesn’t have them anymore. And Gabe’s never felt this before but he knows what it is—a tail wrapped around his, a bit shorter.

It might be the most difficult thing he’s ever had to do, but Gabe manages to pull back a little and look at Tyson: smiling up at him, cushioned by the flowers, the same tanned, hard, human torso spread out just for him. 

And there is Tyson’s lower half: his tail curled slightly beneath him, a deep burgundy red. 

“Tyson,” Gabe breathes out, and Tyson’s smile is brilliant, like the sun has sunk below the sea. 

**Author's Note:**

> ...I've already started on the sequel, it's fine. Nate wasn't even _in this_ and that is completely sacrilege. About halfway through I realized I had an entire action/adventure plot ready to go and knew I couldn't do it in time for the challenge due date, so stay tuned for more!! :)


End file.
